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Elizabeth C. Lim ’08 has worn many hats. Having graduated from both Harvard and Juilliard with degrees in music, Lim spent years composing tracks for everything from PBS documentaries to a Jane Austen role-playing game. Today, she’s a young adult fantasy author with eight — soon to be nine — novels and an anthology under her belt.

“No one is more surprised than I am that I ended up as an author,” Lim said in an interview with The Crimson.

Lim credits a creative writing workshop she took in her senior year of college for inspiring her to start writing fiction. While completing a master’s program at Juilliard and beginning a career in composing, she continued to write stories. Eventually, she decided to seek an agent and publication.

For Lim, the transition from music composition to fiction writing was a natural one.

“I’m using the same part of my brain, but it’s just a different medium that I’m working with. Instead of music and notes and pitches, there’s words,” Lim said. “But writing themes in music is very similar to having a character that I’m looking after in my stories and trying to develop them.”

Music isn’t the only artistic influence in Lim’s novels. In her upcoming novel “A Forgery of Fate,” an underwater fantasy retelling of “Beauty and the Beast,” protagonist and art forger Truyan is able to paint the future — an ability borrowed from the interests of Lim’s own family.

“My family really likes Chinese painting, classical painting,” Lim said. “I took lessons as a kid, and I was really terrible at it. But I still remember the elements of painting and can appreciate it a little bit, so that was really appealing to me to have a protagonist who can paint.”

Truyan is one of multiple Lim characters to have a passion for the arts. In her 2019 novel “Spin the Dawn,” the main character is a seamstress tasked with sewing three magical gowns. Lim’s choice to make the novel’s central character a tailor was also driven by her family and childhood experiences.

“My grandmother was a seamstress when she first came to the U.S. I would sit with her on her lap and watch her work on her sewing machine. She worked in the factories in San Francisco. So a lot of my childhood has these strong memories of her doing her work, and how hard her life was back then,” Lim said. “I really wanted to incorporate some of the feelings that she had told me about into my protagonist and show that there are different sorts of strength, and there are different sorts of passions that you can have and still be a hero.”

Along with family history, Lim also integrates elements from her cultural heritage into her books. Many of her works draw inspiration from Chinese mythology, but she incorporates subtle details into her novels as well.

“My grandma would always boil an egg whenever I had a bruise or when I was about to get sick. That was like something that she brought with her from Hong Kong as a way to take out the ‘bad blood,’ she would say,” Lim said. “I tried to insert these little tidbits from when I grew up into the stories.”

Much of “A Forgery of Fate” takes place in an undersea realm complete with mermaids, talking turtles, and tyrannical dragon lords. For Lim, introducing her readers to this fantasy world posed a unique challenge.

“A lot of my readers grew up in the Western world,” Lim said. “So automatically, when they think of mermaids, they’re going to think of Ariel from Disney.”

However, one element of the novel presented no challenge in getting readers hooked: romance. One of the book’s central storylines involves Truyan’s slow-burn relationship with the Dragon King, who offers her and her family a fresh start in exchange for a marriage contract.

“I’ve always enjoyed reading romantic fantasy,” Lim said. “I think there’s something beautiful about two characters finding that their life is better together and that they want to be together. It’s a different sort of magic that’s very real and tangible in our world as well.”

“A Forgery of Fate” will be Lim’s ninth book in seven years. Since publishing her first novel in 2018, she says that her writing process has become more “relaxed.”

“I’ve learned to be more patient with myself and to be kinder to myself,” Lim said. “When I was younger, I was very much in a rush to get published, and I would get a lot more discouraged.”

As a veteran author, Lim now takes her time with each new novel, knowing that the editing process will eventually transform a draft into a published work to be proud of. Still, she finds writing each book to be a cycle of doubt and confidence.

“Writing a book is never easy,” Lim said. “It’s a marathon. And not just a marathon in terms of the writing itself, but also a mental marathon, because there’s so much uncertainty and self-doubt that goes into writing a book and bringing it out into the world.”

When asked about advice she would give to aspiring authors, Lim emphasized the importance of believing strongly in the story you’re telling.

“Believe in yourself and the work that you’re producing, and just be kind to yourself and to others,” Lim said. “I think that’s a very helpful attitude to have.”

Lim’s next project is a novel for adults that was, like her previous work, inspired by her family. It will be her first departure from YA fantasy, although the book does have “fantastical elements.”

“A Forgery of Fate” will be released on June 3, 2025.

—Staff writer Samantha H. Chung can be reached at samantha.chung@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @samhchung.